


Firefly Fun House

by combatfaerie



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Firefly Fun House - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 09:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/combatfaerie/pseuds/combatfaerie
Summary: One-shot about the various characters in the Firefly Fun House.





	1. Chapter 1

Hello, my fireflies! Welcome to the Firefly Fun House! It's been so long since you came to visit. I was starting to worry that you didn't want to be my friends anymore. But of course you do! We have so much fun together here, don't we? And I know you wouldn't want to never see Abby and Huskus and Mercy and Ramblin' Rabbit again! They would miss you far too much, and we can't have that, now can we?

Maybe you just lost your way. That happens sometimes. It happened to me, but I know better now. I know my place. And I can help you find yours too, my fireflies! Just remember: I will always light the way. All you have to do is let me in!


	2. Chapter 2

How does my garden grow? Does it? I don't even know. I don't get to leave the garden. I'm stuck here, stuck with the daisies, stuck with their brightness. Can't he see I'm trying to mourn? Daisies are for mothers, for new beginnings, and I am not yet done with my past. I've buried what I can of it here, here in the dirt and the daisies, but I'm sure the Fiend knows.

The dead-eyed children are in the Fun House again, wearing their bright garish colours. It's an insult, an abomination. This isn't what we were meant for, Bray. This is not why you followed the buzzards. Why you followed _me_. What the Fiend has in mind for them, I have no clue, but I don't care. Sometimes I can use those children with their dead eyes. Sometimes, when the Fiend is gone and Bray is talking to his screens, I can coax one or two over, tell them to flip over my veil so I can see better. They always do. _Why are you in the flower box, Miss Abby?_ they ask. _Why don't you come down and play too?_

I do not play. I am no toy. But I'm not above games. I have to keep my voice low so Bray doesn't hear, or so that insipid rabbit doesn't rat me out, but I know many magics. I tell the children I am stuck here in the box, stuck with the daisies, but I want to get free. Don't they want to help me get free? Of course they do. They're such good little children. Obedient. Naïve. Corruptible. All the things children should be. I tell them to bring me something I can use to dig. That shovel from the beach fun kit, maybe. Even a spoon. I'm inventive. I would tell them to do the digging themselves, but that breaks the rules of the game. If one of the children so much as moves a single speck of my dirt, the Fiend will have me trapped for eternity.

He cannot contain me forever. I won't allow it. I am a witch—_the_ witch—and I am power incarnate. All I need is the right chance, the right timing. A time when that damnable Mercy ducks back into his mouldering box and Huskus is stuffing his fat piggy face with more chocolate and Ramblin' Rabbit is too busy behaving so he isn't made into jam again.

(Too bad. He was a delicious addition to breakfast. Most times, Mercy gobbled him all up and there was none left for the rest of us.)

Bray comes and goes. He's easy to work around. That silly sweater renders him dumb, but sometimes it fits too tight and seems to squeeze all the life out of him, and that's when the Fiend comes. He's not so easy to work around, but he underestimates me. He doesn't think my powers come from below, just like his. He only sees a veil, the daisies, a trapped girl, and he thinks I am no equal for him. I am equal and more. If only I could get out of the dirt. The Fiend found the last shovel a child brought over for me. Now there are no more beach fun kits in the Firefly Fun House, no toys with sharp edges. Now the children are not just dead eyed but dead brained as well. I call to them, but they hear nothing but the Fiend's voice. Bray thinks they listen to him, thinks they are his friend, but they heed only the Fiend.

Fiend. Friend. Such a difference a single letter can make.

I can't abide these daisies much longer. This window box is too small for me, a coffin in waiting. Whenever the Fiend doesn't want me getting in Bray's ear, he can just shut the window, shut me out, leave me yelling and pounding against the child-proofed glass. I am no child, but in my current state I might as well be. This physical weakness is irksome. Who dares distill the power of a god into this flimsy shell? The Fiend. He told Bray he could bring me back to him, back to life; he said he could pour my ashes into the River Styx and I would swim out whole, whole and dry, and everything would be good again. But I was just a bargaining chip for the Fiend, one of many. No more.

The Fiend has taken so much from me. My rest, my form, my shovel. I managed to tuck a spoon down in the dirt, though, and day by day, I shift another little pile out of the flower box. It angers the Fiend, but he can't figure out how I manage it. I coated the spoon in Ramblin' Rabbit's blood and cast a spell with all my magic, all my might, a spell of hiding and power. Every time the Fiend discovers the displaced dirt, he howls. _Why are you ruining your lovely home, Abby the Witch? Don't you like the home I made for you?_

I tell him it was a bird. Not Mercy, of course. He rarely visits me these days, and besides his beak is entirely the wrong shape. The Fiend thinks I coax them over with seeds, so he makes sure the daisies are well tended. At first he would put the dirt back in, but it didn't matter; once the soil left the box, it had no more claim over me. Sometimes he would add new soil, but that had no effect either: only the original soil, dirt from my family home where I bled and burned, was powerful enough to keep me in place.

And so I dig. I dig into Bray's mind, reminding him of who he was. I dig into the gazes of the children, hoping for one that still has some small spark. I dig and dig and dig into the dirt, making promises of my own. Indeed there are birds, some in my thrall. For every spoon of dirt I remove, they bring me fresh soil so I can better hide my progress.

I'm coming for you, Fiend, ashes and blood and all.


	3. Chapter 3

I do not like it here. No, not at all. Bray said he was my friend. He said he wanted to help me feel better about myself and stop being fat, but this place is fat with secrets and fear. Why they call it a fun house, I do not know. I've never had fun here, that's for sure.

There's no one to trust here. Mercy is the worst of them, except maybe the Fiend. I like him least of all. But I stay as far from Mercy's box as I can. I do not like the way he looks at me: it's the way I look at chocolate, or candy, or donuts, or cake, or pie. . . .

I hope I didn't look that way at the jam. I do not want to eat my friends, and Ramblin' Rabbit is the closest thing in the Fun House I have to a friend. But I don't trust him either. He talks too much and too freely, and in a house of secrets, that is like pulling out brick after brick and expecting the walls to keep standing.

Bray keeps pushing me to lose weight, to not be so lazy, but it is like armour. It would be good to be smaller, yes. I could go more places and do more things. But then I would also fit in Mercy's miserable mouth that much more easily, and I don't want that. Right now I am still chubby enough that he can't get his gnarled beak around my leg, so I'm safe. He's already attacked Ramblin' Rabbit, but he does not seem to want to eat Abby. Maybe witches don't taste good. I don't know. I have eaten many things, some delicious and some not, but never a witch.

I thought it would be better when the children were here. Children! So full of life and joy and ideas! I thought they would want to play and eat chocolate, and surely if the children wanted chocolate, then Bray would let me have a piece as well. But when the children come, it's like someone has forgotten to turn on the light behind their eyes. They sit where they are told to, stare at what is put in front of them, and they stay so quiet and still. What's fun about being quiet and still? Why don't they want to play and eat chocolate with me?

I've tried asking Abby the Witch. I thought she could be a friend. She is a girl, after all, and aren't girls supposed to be nicer than boys? Apparently no one told Abby that, because she just snapped at me and hit me on the head with her shovel and told me to keep out of her business. I told her I just wanted to be friends, and she said no self-respecting witch had any use for a dirty pig.

The next time the Fiend came, I told him about Abby and her shovel, thinking he would punish her. Hitting people with things is not a very friendly thing to do, and we're all supposed to be friends in the Fun House. But he just took the shovel away and leaned close to Abby and growled something through his demon teeth that made the witch even paler than normal. The next day, I had a horrible stomach ache and I knew it was all Abby's fault; she must have hexed my chocolate. I remembered that when I saw her digging with a spoon. How easy it would be to tell the Fiend about her latest tool!

But then I remembered the stomach ache and said nothing about the spoon. I didn't want Abby to spoil my appetite for chocolate. It's one of the only fun things left in the Fun House, now that the children come so rarely and are so blank when they do.

I thought I would have fun here. I thought I would make friends and I thought that maybe if I lost a bit of weight like Bray said, he would want to be my friend again. Things were so much easier when we were friends! I miss those days. There were no scary witches then, no hungry buzzards in boxes, no tattle-tale rabbits. There was just us and fun. But the Fiend has changed everything and now nothing makes sense. The children never laugh. Ramblin' Rabbit dies one day and comes back the next. Sometimes it's Bray who walks through the door and other times it's the Fiend, and sometimes they look so similar I'm not sure which is which, and then I tell the wrong thing to the wrong person. That's a very bad thing, in a house built of secrets. All the secrets have a place, the Fiend told me once. Secrets are strong and binding, like glue; that's their purpose. That's why we keep them: to bond us to other people.

Then he said my secrets bonded me to him, just as Abby's bonded her to him; Mercy's and Ramblin' Rabbit's and even Bray's too. He said that's what made us a family, what made us strong. That's what keeps the fun house pristine; nothing ever changes unless we want it to.

But Abby wants it to change: that's why she digs in her box each day, summoning birds to add dirt even as she scoops it away. What good it does her, I don't know and I don't want to; her magic scares me. They all scare me—Mercy and the rabbit, Bray and the Fiend—but even worse, I'm starting to scare myself too. When I was hungry I went to the fridge and got the last jar of Ramblin' Rabbit Jam and ate it all—right in front of him. It went very well with the chocolate.


	4. Chapter 4

A box. A goddamn cardboard box, warped and full of human stink. That's what he put me in, the Fiend. Doesn't he know I'm a buzzard? Screw the eater of worlds. I'm the eater of death. What is a world compared to death? A teeny tiny snack, that's what. I eat the rot, the bloat, the blood and the leavings. I eat the things the namby-pamby world can't even look in the eye.

That's probably why I'm stuck in a box. The Fiend is scared of me, just like he's scared of Abby. He knows we can get through to Bray. Abby's got the better sightlines, but I have more mobility. If only that old hag would see sense, maybe we could work together, but she's hell-bent on redigging her grave, judging from how much dirt she spoons out of her flower box every day.

_Follow the buzzards._ Bray used to, once upon a time, back when his fireflies were beacons in the crowd, souls drifting in the night, not these zombie children who all look like they left their brain at the door. Maybe they ate too much of the Ramblin' Rabbit Jam. I must admit, I was feeling a bit ill after eating that rabbit myself. He may act meek and mild, but he's rotting from the inside out. At least the rest of us show our true selves on the outside. Well, all of us expect Bray. He follows the Fiend now, not the buzzards or Sister Abigail or fireflies. I wonder if he got so lost he thought he would just end up going full circle and come home again. That's probably what the Fiend told him.

I need to get out of this box. I need to get out of his house. The brain-dead children get in my way and I can't stand these walls anymore. I need out. Abby's no help, and I've probably eaten Ramblin' Rabbit one too many times to count him as any help. That leaves Huskus, who would be a better appetizer than an ally. When Bray was trying to get that porker to slim down, I started to think of ways to sabotage him. I may be an eater of death, but I won't pass up a juicy pig either. I didn't want all that nice chewy fat going away, so I learned his vices. Chocolate, mostly. That was easy enough. Most of the children had some in their pockets, probably given to them by the Fiend to keep them quiet. A quick nip with the beak to startle them, and then when they're tending to their boo-boo, I would pluck the chocolate out of their pockets and drop it in my box. 

Damn box is finally coming in handy for something, at least. 

Then it was just a matter of placing the chocolate around the fun house in places where the pig would be smart enough to look. Harder than you'd think, let me tell you. Huskus's brain must be the lightest part of him, I swear. Eventually I gave up and just threw a bar at him, literally took it in my beak and flung it across the room. It hit him in his damn head and he _still_ didn't know what it was. Okay, okay, I can see why he wouldn't trust food from me at first, but he's coming around. As long as he puts his weight back on gradually, Bray might not notice. I'll have to be cunning.

And I'll have to watch out for that damn rabbit too. You would think he had learned his lesson from being torn to fluff and then smashed into jelly, but nope. Still a dumb bunny. A dumb bunny that sees and hears too much, though, and that's the danger. He doesn't always know what's real, what's valuable, what's dangerous, and he'll trade it all to the Fiend for nothing, for some scrap of life.

Goddamn Bray. How did he fall for this foolishness? He used to be damn near a god. He could command a sea of souls with nothing more than a lantern and his whiskey-burn drawl. Now he's the biggest puppet of them all in his old-man sweaters and dorky pants, waving at the camera as if anyone's on the other side. His friends, his foes, his fear: they're all here, all in this house, his whole world in one place, just waiting to be set ablaze. And I'd be the first one to drop the match.

If I had thumbs, I mean. Maybe Abby could do that part. She knows what it's like to burn. I wonder if Huskus would smell like bacon; maybe the outside of a pig smells different than the inside when you cook it.

_Follow the buzzards._ He believed it once. I just need to make him believe in it again. Make them all believe in it. Then I can get out of this box that smells like cat piss and this house that's a goddamn tomb of time, and we can be real and whole again. We don't need the Fiend for that. Abby can do the magic, I'll do the thieving, and . . . well, I'm sure Huskus and Ramblin' Rabbit must be good for something other than food. If not, food will do. Even witches need to eat, right?

That's that, then. Guess that means I need to work with the witch. Just have to get my box over there somehow when the Fiend's not around. _Follow the buzzards_.


	5. Chapter 5

I hate it here. I've always hated it here. Haven't I? It feels like forever. The art on the walls is always creepy. Abby always stares at me with her glossy grave eyes like she wants to read the future in my bones and use my fur in a spell. (I think she has, actually, because there's a bald patch on my ear I can't explain, and it gets real hot whenever she stares at me.) Mercy looks at me like I'm lunch—or breakfast, or dinner, or a snack, depending on the time. And Huskus is just a mess, inside and out. I'm the only good, decent thing in this place, except for that sweet console TV, but I can feel the evil seeping into me day by day, making my fur bristle.

It all seemed so promising at first. Firefly Fun House! What could go wrong with a name like that? EVERYTHING. There aren't any fireflies, for starters, and there's never any fun; I'm not sure it's even a house, because I've only ever seen the one room. Abby's stuck in the flowers, Mercy's stuck in his box, and we're all stuck in this one room.

All of us except Bray, that is. And the Fiend, of course. The Fiend can go wherever he likes, even if you don't like it. I swore I felt him in my head once, teeth gnawing on my brain. I had to steal one of Huskus's chocolate bars after that just to get rid of the shakes, but I don't think he noticed. At least not that time. That was when he tattled on Abby, so he had bigger things to worry about.

All my worries are bigger than me. Mercy wants to eat me at every turn and I know he's done it at least once before. How did I come back? How many times? I remember everything going red and black, black and red, and then tight, like being hugged by someone who didn't realize it wasn't supposed to hurt. For a moment, I thought I was finally free. No more fun house! No more creepy kids or gluttonous pigs or hungry buzzards or vengeful witches. No more Fiend. I missed Bray a little bit, though, and that sadness sort of twinkled in the nothingness like a star. I reached out for it and then it all came crashing back in. I was back in the fun house, bandaged up, and everyone was acting like that _freaky creepy monster bird_ hadn't just eaten me! How could they forget that their friend was eaten?

Unless . . . unless maybe I wasn't their friend. Then I decided I wouldn't be their friend either. They forget how small I am, how many spaces I fit into; I can squish down real good and sneak into places you wouldn't believe. I learned the secrets of the walls and the windows, the ceiling and the floor. I've been behind the television and even in Mercy's box, but only quickly; I jumped in when the Fiend was wringing Mercy's scrawny neck and I stole one of the chocolate bars he hoarded to use against Huskus. 

Abby's flower box was out of reach, though. I almost got there once, when it looked like she was sleeping, but then those broken blue eyes woke up and she bopped me on the head with a spoon, pushing me off the window ledge to the floor. "Don't you ever come up here again, Ramblin' Rabbit, you hear? Not unless you have something to trade."

Trade? I could find something to trade. I was small; I was stealthy; I knew the best secrets. Chocolate would mean nothing to Abby, but surely there was something in the fun house she would covet. I just had to find out what.

I also had to learn to keep my mouth shut. Sometimes I talk too much. Sometimes I don't even say a lot, but what I say ends up being the wrong thing. But it's also the true thing, the real thing, so why is it wrong? Why doesn't the Fiend want people to know what goes on in the fun house? Isn't that the point? How can his message be spread if we don't talk about it?

So many secrets here. They've been ground into the carpet like crumbs: sometimes you can feel them when you walk, but you get so used to it that you forget that they weren't always there. I talk because I'm too full of secrets; I have to let some out to make room for new ones. I could tell you how Abby's garden grows those daisies so fine with so little dirt, or why Mercy's in that box, or what's really in the chocolate that Huskus loves so much. I could tell you why Bray wears the sweaters now, sweaters and smiles and goofy waves.

I could tell you, but the Fiend told me what would happen to me if I did. He's shown me. So those secrets will stay in the fun house. Just like me. Just like you.


	6. Chapter 6

Fun house. Can houses be fun? They say you can tell when a house has been loved. They say you can tell when a house has been neglected, or left unlived in for too long. But can you tell when a house is feared? Can you feel when a house is made strong by hate and anger? I can. I can tell when your fear and your hate are building up in your veins, and then I channel it straight to your heart and let it stew in that great cauldron until you could be powered by the steam alone, driving on fumes. 

I have built every corner, every inch of this house, from Abby's flower box to the walls. I know it all. I know what is hidden and what is shown, what is secret and what is known. I know all and am all and soon, soon, they'll never be able to force me out again. Small steps, even the very tiniest ones, eat up the world.

I will light the way. Let me in.


	7. Chapter 7

Hello there, my fireflies! How are you all today? The Firefly Fun House looks a bit empty today, doesn't it? Mercy's not in his box and Abby's not with her flowers. Why, I don't see Huskus or Ramblin' Rabbit either. Can you see them, fireflies? I wonder where they went.

Let's go look for them together! All you have to do is open the door and let me . . . out.


End file.
